Shamba Records

Small scale farmers in Africa  are on the verge of giving up, this is due to market exploitation, delayed payments, lack of credit alternatives and finally limited farm inputs and resources.

To this end, we created Shamba Records a digital tool that keeps records of the small scale farmers production data, links the farmers to better markets, processes their payments immediately and provides a credit alternative. In addition we work with a pool of verified agrovets who assist in distribution of farm inputs. We deploy Shamba Records both offline and online using tools such as USSD, Mobile apps, Web portal and bulk SMS. We implement the solution through model farmers who assist  in onboarding other farmers.

Our solution being tech enabled  is borderless and can be used globally by many other small scale farmers.

It’s estimated that in the African continent there are more than 65% small scale farmers, who contribute to the more than 300$ billion dollar Agriculture market. The small scale farmers  earn less than 1,000 $ annually and the major cause of this is market exploitation, lack of farm inputs, delayed payments and lack of access to information channels for profitable farming. 

These factors have led to many farmers selling off of their land to real estate companies  and this is posing a threat to the food security in Africa and globally. For example some crops like coffee, farmers have to wait more than 5 months to receive their payment and while waiting there is no credit facility to help them stay afloat. In addition many farmers have reported that the inability to access better farm inputs have led to decline in quality yields as well as lowering the level of producti

Shamba records is a digital tool that digitizes the agriculture value chain. We do this by providing a  real time data collection tool, a payment and credit tool. These tools assist the farmers in getting services related to farming and as well as caters for the financial bit of the farmer.

We solve the challenges of farmer’s harvest data  manipulation, market exploitation and delayed payments due to lack of financial tools. We assist the small scale farmers to increase their incomes from 600$ on an annual basis to close to 1,000$. As well  as performing a credit score for the farmers to assist them access credit services.

Shamba Records uses Blockchain to track payments to farmers as well as to trace the origin of crops. This helps to mitigate crop diseases, production quality as well as increase the farmer’s income.In addition we use artificial intelligence to establish patterns and make predictions on quality and quantity of crops in different seasons and regions.

Shamba records enrolls small scale farmers who on average have 1 to 2 acres of land size, the small scale farmers are mainly women who normally do the farming and their spouses working in small towns or away from home. The farmers practice mixed farming, one cash crop while the others are for household consumption.

Most of the small scale farmers mainly depend on agriculture to educate their kids and also to meet their financial needs. However due to the challenges of market exploitation, post harvest losses, delayed payments and lack of credit. Most of these families aren’t able to educate their kids, since their main source of income is affected.

Most of these farmers own a feature phone and those advanced have a smartphone, the feature is a major asset since they use it to access mobile money either from spouses or well wishes. Our solution is centered towards the feature phones for easy access and familiarity of it.

The feature phone acts as a medium of relaying harvest records, market prices, payments, credit and information channel of farm inputs and application strategies.

Shamba records is a bridge that connects small scale farmers to resources and helps to improve their production capacities. As stated earlier, without a proper farmer’s database of small scale farmers in Africa, it can be difficult to figure the current production and financial needs. However through our work we’re able to create a link by collecting the small scale farmers’ production data and providing a financial tool that processes payments and offers credit. Thus by far, improving their yields and payments.

Shamba Records offers a new way and approach of accessing small scale farmers and ensuring food security. What makes our approach different is having a product that works both online and offline. This makes our work seamless and easily adaptable to small scale farmers. In addition digitizing the value chain and creating a bridge that links the farmers directly to end customers and resources makes our product more valuable.

Currently many competitors like twiga foods and capture solutions aren’t able to create a huge impact on the small scale farmers. Especially access to credit, payments and farming information materials. In addition with the use of emerging technologies such as Blockchain and AI we’re able to do tracking and tracing of crops and payments. With AI we’re able to make predictions on farmers production capacity.

Currently Shamba Records runs on Blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. The reason for blockchain  technology is to achieve transparency, accountability, trust and participation. As well as conduct peer to peer transactions between farmers.On artificial intelligence we use the technology for data mining and analysis, this helps us mainly to categorize the data, achieve patterns as well as make predictions.With AI we're also able to match different farmers needs and available tools.

Shamba Records leverages emerging technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. On blockchain we’re  using the Hyperledger technologies to build the framework of the platform, we’ve created a network that has the parent block where the small scale farmers registration details are stored, in addition we have created a payment network that facilitates the peer to peer transactions between farmers and organizations. With each new transaction we’re able to create new blocks and time stamp them, we do this with the  purpose to ensure there is no data manipulation especially on the clerks level or middle men who normally change the farmer’s data.

Shamba Records improves and makes small scale farmers work profitable in the long run, we achieve this by building a bridge to  the market,farm inputs and capital/credit to the farmers. The bridge being Shamba Records has different segments that play a role towards profitability. One segment is on data collection, where through it we have a pool of farmers and their profiles, from this we’re able to advise the farmers on planting seasons, fertilizer/farm input applications, crop disease mitigation and capital to buy seedlings. With this tool we monitor the farmers during the production period,then from there we’re able to make predictions on the end quality and quantity of the harvests.With this information we’re able to lock in buyers who want a steady supply of quality harvests.With a ready buyer onboard we’re able to provide a market to the farmers.  

With a seamless flow of data from production, inputs, payments and farmer’s land size, we’re able to create a credit score that assists in providing financial aid to the farmers. Shamba Records does and with our current Beta product in the market we have increased the farmer’s earnings by 45%.

Shamba Records currently reaches 6000 small scale farmers who belong to various farmer’s unions and cooperatives.  Our work is mainly working with farmers groups, this comes in handy especially in aggregation of harvests as well as  in disbursing farm inputs. We’re able to get the high numbers since we onboard a cooperative  as well as all their farmers (members). Then we trickle down and  work with the respective cooperatives  clerks and shamba records agents to onboard each farmer; collecting their basic and economic details. It’s our goal by the last quarter of 2020 to onboard another 10,000 small scale farmers. We shall hit the 10,000 farmers this year through working with bodies such as marketing agencies that market on behalf of more than 3,000 cooperatives who on average have more than 2000 farmers per cooperative. Our goal in the next five years is to onboard more than 2 Million farmers through the 124 Million East African population.

Our goal for 2020 is to pilot our solution in Uganda, so far we have established a partnership with a Ugandan based company. Through the current partnership we have established two piloting districts. These areas have a big pool of small scale farmers who mainly grow bananas, maize and coffee. With a successful pilot we shall be impacting more than 200,000 small scale farmers both in Kenya and Uganda. 

Our goal for the next five years is to scale to more than 7 countries in the Sub Saharan Africa region,  these will help us reach more than 10 Million small scale farmers. With the growth and scale we shall introduce more products such as crop insurance, crowdfunding for farmer’s unique projects  as well as increase the incomes of the millions and millions of small scale farmers to more than 1,500$.We shall achieve this through establishing partnerships with farmer based organizations as well as with farm inputs producers and the different Governments in the new countries.

Below are our major challenges towards scaling and growth.

•  Funding: currently we’re bootstrapping as a company, whatever we get we invest back in the company. However this is limiting us to scale as well as hire a bigger team to manage and support our growth.

•  Equipment: Some of the farmer’s based unions lack an enabling environment to run a digital platform. Normally we solve this by investing our own money by buying computers and devices to the farmer’s unions.

• Networks: we need networks to farmer’s institutions, farm inputs producers, machinery and many others. These networks will assist us grow the traction as well as to increase the value offer to the small scale farmers.

• On funding: we’re currently fundraising and we’re in talks with a couple of impact funds organizations. We’re in close talks with African Development Bank who are interested in scaling our product to the rest of the Sub saharan Africa region. In addition we’re part of JICA Open Africa innovation challenge, with aim of piloting emerging technologies in the Sub Saharan Africa agriculture sector.

• On Equipment: We have initiated talks with a Japanese international company called Sumitomo Corporation through their Kenyan Office. Whereby we shall get equipment ranging from computers, drones, digital weighing scales,plant and soil sensors . This will assist us in fully implementing digital environments that have a seamless IOT environment.

• On Networks: We’re currently working with a couple of marketing agencies who market and sell on behalf of small scale unions and cooperatives.The agencies have thousands and thousand of small scale organizations and thus translates to millions and millions of small scale farmers.

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Currently Shamba Records has a total team of 10 staff, 7 people working full time.While 3 working part time. Normally we have customers onboarding campaigns whereby we use 10 to 15  agents on a contractual basis to onboard new subscriptions. Our goal is to increase the full time staff to 16  by the end of 2020, this will help in matching the demand of our services. During the next customer drive we’re going to add 30 contractual agents on board the farmers.

Shamba Records is composed of a highly talented team, with a broad experience of the total team adding up to 20 years in the agriculture and tech industries. The team has diverse skills offering expertise in different fields, currently the team has 4 technical team members, 4 business development/ marketing team and 2 legal/ policy making members. On a periodic basis the company works with agronomists and agents who expand the Shamba Records network.

Currently we’re working with two marketing agencies that’s CMS and SMS marketing agencies, these two agencies  sell and market on behalf of farmers cooperatives. The  agencies help us  to increase our customer base, we achieve this by digitizing the farmers unions under them and then trickling down to their members/small scale farmers.

On the regional and international front we’re both working with JICA and AFDB, these two organizations are drafting the structures of how to replicate our solution in the wider Sub saharan region and parts of Asia.

Shamba Records has three major income generating sources,the companies earns money through offering the below services:

• Payments processing: to solve the challenge of delayed payments, shamba records has a payment tool that is used to settle farmers incomes.Through the tool the company earns between 1 to 5% commission depending with the amount being processed.

• Subscription fees: Shamba records normally charge less than 1 dollar per month for product maintenance and communication channels. This charge caters for bulk sms, alerts, USSD and the farmer’s union CRM systems.

• Credit fees/ interest: Shamba Records earns a commission on every credit processed through the platform. However, in the next phase Shamba Records intends to lend from it’s balance sheet and this will make the company earn an interest on every credit processed.

Shamba Records views Solve as a great opportunity to grow our networks and get into partnerships with companies that offer IOT hardwares ranging from sensors,  computers, drones and digital weighing scales this will assist our platform to fully become digital and offer more efficient.The equipment will go to different farmers and farmers unions.

In addition Shamba Records is currently bootstrapping and needs funding to be able to scale, with Solve in the picture. Shamba Records will get legitimacy and solid investor networks.

Shamba Records needs a partner who will offer expertise in scaling regionally and globally, while the partner can also provide IOT devices mostly to be used in product distribution and in the creation of the digital environments that will act as the foundations to the shamba records platform. In addition Shamba Records wishes to partner with a more advanced tech company in fully deploying Blockchain and Machine learning so as to achieve security, traceability and data mining.

We're open to organizations that are willing to increase their foot print in the agriculture sector in Africa.These organizations can be tech focused, women and social impact aligned.

Shamba Records has more 65% women who are Small scale farmers, with our digital platform we have been able to uplift the lives of many women in a]Africa. We have done so by providing instant payments which solves the challenge of delayed payments. In addition we have protected the small scale women farmers rights by safeguarding their harvest data, which in turn solves the challenge of market exploitation and loss of data. Through Shamba Records we’re improving the lives of many women by increasing their pay by 40% and also providing a credit alternative to the women farmers.

Shamba Records is currently leveraging artificial intelligence through collecting Small scale farmers production data and harvest data. In addition Shamba Records has plans in the pipeline to acquire plant and soil sensors. As well as the company has a mapping tool, with all these data sources the company does analysis that helps to predict food security in Africa. In addition the collected and real time is used to control and map out crop diseases. Artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, is very key to Shamba Records , since it enables data mining and establishes different patterns that are very key to food security  in Africa and globally.